


ground control to major tom (your circuit's dead, there's something wrong)

by boasamishipper



Series: and i think it's gonna be a long, long time [2]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Top Gun (1986)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Guilt, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Men Crying, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Outer Space, Panic Attacks, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 20:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20319286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boasamishipper/pseuds/boasamishipper
Summary: It's lonely out in space.





	ground control to major tom (your circuit's dead, there's something wrong)

**Author's Note:**

> Set approximately two and a half years after Out Along The Edges.

There’s still blood on his hands.

Forty minutes in the bathroom, scrubbing his hands fervently under the stream of near-boiling water coming out of the faucet, and the palms of his hands are still stained with blood. Not his, of course. It would have been so much better, so much easier if it had been his blood. But it’s not, and he’d failed, and now he has to deal with the consequences.

He’s pacing around his room like the walls can’t hold him, and yet he feels like he’s not even there at all. Like he’s far away, on another planet, in another galaxy. Deaf to the pained groans in the infirmary across the ship, to Talos’s tear-thick words as he talks softly to an unhearing Soren, gently holding his wife’s bandaged hand. He hears it all, and yet he hears nothing. Just a high buzzing in his ears.

There’s not enough air in here. There’s not enough anything. Stars — _God, _goddamn it, he can’t do this. He needs to — he needs to—

Before Maverick can talk himself out of it, he presses the call button on his communicator. He’d just come back from Earth the week before and knows that it’s too early to be calling anyone, but he’s desperate to hear a familiar voice. A voice that belongs to someone he hasn’t failed.

_“Kazansky.”_

He chokes on a sob. “Ice,” he manages. “Ice, I-I need—”

_“Mav?”_ He can hear Ice’s voice transition from exhausted and sleep-slurred to wide awake and concerned in real time. _“Mav, what’s wrong? What do you need?”_

“Just need — just need to hear your voice.” _I need to distract myself from my failure, and you always bring me back to Earth._ “Please.”

Ice doesn’t ask why, just starts talking. Maverick’s breathing too hard to really hear him at first, but his terror fades the longer he listens to Ice talk about the pain of transfer paperwork and the brass at Fallon, and how it’s been snowing for the last few weeks and that makes him long for California’s dry heat and humidity more than he’d ever thought possible, and how Chewie ate one of the catnip toys Fury got her for Christmas and then got stoned for three hours. Listening to Ice talk, Maverick feels like he can finally relax.

_“Hey.”_ Ice’s voice goes soft. _“That enough of my voice for you?”_

Maverick tries for a laugh, but it falters halfway through. “You know I can never get enough of your voice.”

_“Mav, what happened?”_

Damn. Here he thought he’d been so smart to set the call to audio-only, and yet Ice had seen right through him even when there had been nothing to see. He sits down at the foot of his bed, running a hand through his hair. “We went to Aakon to find more Skrull,” he whispers. “But the Kree found us, and we had to run, and I could only get thirty of the Skrull to safety. Thirty out of two hundred.” He can still see them reaching out for him, still see them falling to the ground, their bodies riddled with blaster bolts. Men, women, and children. Dead because of him. “I couldn’t save them, Ice.”

_“Oh, Mav,”_ Ice breathes. _“Baby. God, I’m so sorry.”_

At the word ‘baby,’ all of the tears that Maverick had tried so hard to suppress come pouring out of him, his body wracked with guilt and sobs. “I should have been faster,” he cries. “I should have known the Kree would find us eventually, I just — I didn’t think. And Soren got hurt trying to help me, and now she’s in the infirmary and Gynara doesn’t know if she’ll make it; goddamn it, I should have—”

_“No. No, Mav, you did everything right. And you saved as many of them as you could—”_

“It wasn’t enough!” It’s only the feeling of energy crackling at his fingertips that forces him to calm down. If he doesn’t control himself, he could blow up the entire ship — and then the blood of even more Skrull would be on his hands. “It wasn’t enough, Ice. I could have…I could have saved more. And I didn’t. I got scared. I panicked.”

He can hear Ice breathing on the other end of the communicator, on the other side of space. Maverick closes his eyes, tries to picture him. Probably in bed, illuminated by the warm light of the lamp, the sheets around him a mess, his hair tousled. Still beautiful. Always beautiful. _“Everyone gets scared sometimes, Mav,”_ Ice finally says. _“It’s what makes us human.”_

It’s strange, but out of everything Ice has said so far, that sentence actually makes him feel better. He is human. He’s not Kree; he’s _human._ He doesn’t have to strive for unachievable perfection, and he’s allowed to be scared. And yet… “I still failed them.”

_“Then next time, strive to do better. Learn from your mistakes.”_ Ice’s voice goes soft again. _“You did your best, Mav. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”_

Maverick breathes out. “Yeah,” he says quietly. He lays down flat on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and wishing it were a different one. “I know.”

_“I love you.”_

His throat goes tight. “I love you too,” he whispers, and he turns onto his side, swiping tears from his eyes. “Sorry for waking you, I know it’s early.”

_“It’s okay,”_ Ice says, but he would have said the same no matter what time Maverick woke him up at. _“Only went to bed about an hour ago. I finally got sent the files for the next batch of students; Jesus, the pickings are getting slim…”_

Maverick closes his eyes, and he listens to Ice talk about the new students, about how he thinks their callsigns are terrible, how he already has a feeling which pilot is going to be Top Gun and which ones are going to test his patience more than the others; the sound of his voice spreading warmth throughout Maverick’s entire body, all the way down to his soul.

He would do better next time. He’d learn from his mistakes. And as long as he had Ice to hold onto, to be his light in the darkness, he could handle anything.


End file.
